Digital camera [Archive]

Mercutio

03-13-2002, 05:08 PM

Using IE on Storageforum for the first time. Just saw all the avatars for the first time. Jeez you people like wasting bandwidth. :P

Tannin, you should've consulted before choosing that dreadful Sony. Floppies are a neat trick, but most cameras on the market now take pictures that're larger than 1.44MB, and memory stick... shudder.

I have a Kodak DC290 at the moment. 2.1Mpixel, nice, short focal length, good optical zoom, great range of f-stops for a digital camera, plus I can play Doom on it (nope, not kidding. Doom. Imps and troopers and Cyberdemons. Oh my.). Perfectly acceptable for typical candid photogaphy, but like most digitals, frustrating to use outdoors or in bright sunlight.

My brother just bought a reasonably high-end Fuji FinePix 4900. 4.something MPixel, 6x optical zoom, and about the same range of f-stops as my DC290. Much better for outdoor use, that one, and quality that's positively stellar. The only reason I wouldn't want one myself is that I've already made an investment in Compactflash cards (and IBM Microdrives) for my DC290, but it's pretty easily the nicest digital I've gotten to use.

The camera I *am* drooling over is the Nikon CoolPix 995. 3.4Mp, similar specs to my Kodak and compactflash support... Yay! At around $500US, it's probably the best buy on the market right now (my Kodak still sells for about $600 new).

I can't believe cameras are even sold with upper-end f-stops of 5 or 6, but there are a number of them out there (look at the specs on HP or Panasonic cameras sometime). Do people not know what they're buying?

The Sony cameras I'm familiar with are painfully heavy and have a narrower range of f-stops than the cameras I've mentioned. I literally can't find anything about a floppy version of the FD-1000 (are you sure you aren't talking about the CD-R equipped one?), but I do see that with the mini-CD-R one you get a 10x zoom, which is pretty damn nice.
Still, support for floppy or CD-R is a total sham. The 156MB CD-Rs cost $10 apiece and aren't rewriteable (and probably suck batteries like there's no tomorrow, too), while the floppy is a dead. bulky medium for something as theoretically portable as a two and a half pound still camera.

I've said it before, but I think CF is the media of the future. I've seen 512MB flashcards, and of course the Microdrive scales to 1GB+. Desktop readers are cheap - did I see that the latest soltek board has onboard support for a CF reader? Anyway, the cards are cheap and have massive scalability in capacity. What's not to love?

OK. I'm done ranting. For now.

Stereodude

03-13-2002, 05:49 PM

Silence Infidels :D

Canon EOS D60

enough said

Oh wait you didn't ask what camera you should get. I've got my eye on the D60. The body is supposed to street at $2k which is the current selling price of the D30.

Currently I have a Canon Powershot A20.

Stereodude

Tea

03-13-2002, 10:24 PM

Excuse brain-fade. That's the FD-100, not 1000. It's a new model, may not be on their web site yet.

1.2 Mpixel, 3x optical zoom, f6.4 Saves as JPEG, 640 x 480, 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024. (There is digital zoom too, but digital zoom is crap - better to simply take the wide-angle photo and use your PC software to crop it.

As I said, over-priced to buggery, but that's Sony for you. But in reality there are only two cameras on the market that can do what I want. Both are Sonys. The next model down is $100 or so cheaper and a lot lower spec. This one was $875 plus tax. I ordered a Transend 256MB flash memory stick for it today for $230 plus tax. If, for some reason, it doesn't work, I can exchange it.

The thing with cameras is that there are only three interfaces that I know of. RS-232 (the less said the better), USB, and floppy disc. Oh, and those CD things, which I don't bother to count. USB is all very well, but it means messing about with cables under the desk, and it means that I have to use a USB capable computer to see the pictures, not to mention needing to load file transfer software on it. I could live with that for my own systems - I have a W2k box at home and plenty of USB-equipped ones at the office, but it's no good for visiting. I have friends with old computers, lots of them. With a floppy drive in the camera, I can use any computer on the planet. With USB, if I take it on holiday to Queensland I am limited to the memory on the flash card, unless my friend up there I stay with spends another $1000 on a new computer.

But it's not reallly something I bought to use as a general-purpose camera. That's just a bonus. I bought it to take pictures of PC components for my web page. For that task, floppy discs are perfect. Mostly I just want to take three or four shots of a hard disc or a motherboard and plug them right into the page. 1280 resolution is heaps for web work, in fact I mostly shoot at 1024 and crop them back to 500 by 400 or so.

Anyway, I now have a $500 camera that cost me $1000. Typical Sony.

Sigh.

My dad, by the way, just bought a real one, a Nikon.

Mercutio

03-13-2002, 11:21 PM

Mercutio

03-13-2002, 11:25 PM

Tannin, flash-memory readers usually cost less than $40 in the US. You plug 'em into a USB port on your desktop or carry them around with your camera (most are 4"x6" or smaller and weigh less than a half-pound). PCMCIA to flash adaptors can be as cheap as $20, but only support one media type.

Floppy is just... bad.

Stereodude

03-13-2002, 11:59 PM

re: Powershot A20.

f2.4 to f4.8. Ouch. Hope you don't live near any windows. ;)
They don't even list f-numbers for the EOS digitals. That's a little suspicious for $1000+ digital cameras.

I feel your pain, Tannin.
Apparently you don't know much about cameras. The F2.4 is largest aperature at the 8mm setting on the zoom and the F4.8 is the largest at the 24mm setting of the zoom. It can get smaller than those numbers.

As for the EOS digitals they are SLRs. They do no come with a lens. Hence they do not have an "F numbers" listed. Depending on what mm lens you want and how much you're willing to pay will determine what aperature lens you get. You can get a 200mm F 2.8 if you're willing to pay for it.

Stereodude

Pradeep

03-14-2002, 12:05 AM

Hehe, I have a Coolpix 995 with 1GB Microdrive Mercutio :p Nothing like being able to take 650 photos whilst shooting in Auckland and still having a couple of hundred in reserve :)

Tony, most cameras these days are USB mass storage devices, and appear as another removable drive when plugged into a windows box.

A couple of sample pics (around 1mb each):

http://www.vdpc.org/DSCN0025.JPG - A baggage cart took this shot on 10sec timer.

http://www.vdpc.org/DSCN0045.JPG - From the SkyTower in Auckland using the fisheye lens.

Mercutio

03-14-2002, 07:03 AM

Apparently you don't know much about cameras. The F2.4 is largest aperature at the 8mm setting on the zoom and the F4.8 is the largest at the 24mm setting of the zoom. It can get smaller than those numbers.
Stereodude

F-number = a ratio of the size of the light apeture to the size of the lens. Low F-numbers indicate that you're pretty much always going to have a lot of light in the picture, which is fine when you're indoors and using a flash, but really dreadful if you're outside trying to minimize the brightness of the sun (when F-10 - 16 comes in handy).

You can't tell me that being stuck @ f-2.8 all the time is a good thing. It's not.

Stereodude

03-14-2002, 10:18 AM

F-number = a ratio of the size of the light apeture to the size of the lens. Low F-numbers indicate that you're pretty much always going to have a lot of light in the picture, which is fine when you're indoors and using a flash, but really dreadful if you're outside trying to minimize the brightness of the sun (when F-10 - 16 comes in handy).

You can't tell me that being stuck @ f-2.8 all the time is a good thing. It's not.
Thanks for the lesson in basic photography. :roll:

I know all about F stops and the aperture of a lens. What you missed in my original post and still don't seem to be getting is that F-2.4 is the largest possible aperture at the widest zoom setting. It is not the only aperture the camera can use at that focal length. The camera writes the F-stop and the shutter speed in the metadata along with piles of other information. I can assure you it uses smaller apertures than 2.4 or 4.8.

Stereodude

Mercutio

03-14-2002, 04:28 PM

Then why isn't that information listed in the specifications of the camera?

Pradeep

03-14-2002, 05:25 PM

The reason they don't post that spec is because all that it required is the lowest f-stop number possible. There is no "advantage" in posting a higher number.

time

03-14-2002, 05:40 PM

.. most cameras these days are USB mass storage devices, and appear as another removable drive when plugged into a windows box.

Yes, but if you have Win98 or ME, you need to install a driver (albeit small), and Win95 is a non-starter.

Having said that, I think you're insane, Tea. That's a ludicrous amount of money to spend on such a low-spec camera. And then to compound it by giving Sony more money for memory sticks :roll:

If you leave a USB cable plugged into the computer, all you need to do is connect the camera and sit back (at least with some software). All finished in the time it would take you to merely insert the floppy.

I'll second the plug for the A20. It works great with both indoor and outdoor shots. Not bad for a fully automatic camera.

Having said that, I lust after a Nikon 995. Or an 885. Of course, they're 3MP vs 2MP, but the Canon cannot be fine tuned, which limits its application. And I don't like its control layout. The Nikon has a preview button with the ability to delete the latest shot rather than saving it. I'd pay for that alone.

But they're damned expensive here. The Olympus 3020 is cheaper, but I haven't worked out what the compromises are.

Corvair

03-14-2002, 06:23 PM

...but really dreadful if you're outside trying to minimize the brightness of the sun (when F-10 - 16 comes in handy). You can't tell me that being stuck @ f-2.8 all the time is a good thing. It's not.

High shutter speed is a much better controller for exposure than a lens' F-stop setting. If you need a shallow field of focus, you will need to open the aperture up with a corresponding increase in shutter speed to maintain a given exposure index.

Tea

03-14-2002, 06:46 PM

I think you're insane, Tea. That's a ludicrous amount of money to spend on such a low-spec camera.

When it comes to money, Tannin and I are insane. We just wanted to be able to use any computer with the camera without fuss or bother. For example, after work yesterday, I went to my girlfriend's place, took some shots and was able to show them to her right away - despite the fact that her computer (a) doesn't have a USB port, and (b) runs NT 4.0. With any other camera, I couldn't have shown her this:

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/vegies.jpg

(To save messing the thread-width up, that's a cropped detail from the original 1280 by 1024 image. It's her wonderful vegetable garden. As you can see, a very nice corn crop this year. Unfortunately, the corn hides all the other things from this angle.)

Tannin

03-14-2002, 06:48 PM

Excuse me - that's my girlfriend you are talking about there, Tea. Sometimes I think that you forget you are only imaginary.

Bartender

03-14-2002, 06:49 PM

Maybe she is more real then you think Tannin.

Buck

03-14-2002, 06:51 PM

Maybe she is more real then you think Tannin.

Look who's talking.

Tannin, that picture is nice, but it should be more clear.

BR

Corvair

03-14-2002, 06:53 PM

At home, I have an electronic camera and 3 "conventional" film cameras.

For electronic still camera, I currently use an Olympus Camedia 2500. It was and still is one of the best low-light performing consumer-class digital cameras. It uses both SmartMedia and/or CompactFlash storage (no USB -- whoopdie doo).

As for the conventional film cameras: An old Zeiss Ikon reflex (uses 120 film), Nikon F (very rugged fully-mechanical workhorse) with high-point and waist-level finders, and a "modern" Nikon F-3 with motor drive, auto-back, as well as high-point, sports, and waist-level finders.

I also have a wide assortment of Nikkor AI lenses that I use between the 2 Nikons: 16mm / f2.8 full-field fisheye, 18 mm / f3.5 ultra-wide angle, 20mm / f2.8 fast - very wide angle, 24mm / f2.0 fast wide angle, 28mm / f2.8 fast wide angle, 35mm / f1.4 fast wide angle, 50 mm / f1.4 normal, 55mm / f2.8 Micro-Nikkor, 85mm / f1.4 fast short telephoto, 105mm / f1.8 fast telephoto, 200mm / f4.0 Micro-Nikkor, 300mm / f4.0 fast telephoto, and a Vivitar 300mm ~ 600mm / f3.5 ~ f4.8 sports telephoto zoom. A large heavy duty Bogen tripod (3036?), a small light Bogen tripod, a Nikon microscope adaptor, a Nikon bellows extension for doing and a lens reversing ring for *serious* close-up work, a copy stand, Metz CT-4545 flash, Nikon Macro Ring Flash, and... eh... probably other things that I can't recall at this moment.

Mercutio

04-20-2002, 11:04 PM

Spent some money today. On StereoDude's advice I picked up a Canon Powershot G2. $600. And a new (well, lease-return) 21" Sony display. The display is mine and mine alone. I'm splitting the cost of the camera with my girlfriend's parents; they wanted to buy a crappy little HP digicam and I offered to pick up the different between that and "something decent". I suggested the Nikon 995 and the Powershot G2. They didn't like the 995's formfactor, so we got the G2.

Probably more camera than they need. That's OK. As the family's dedicated A/V geek I'm the one who takes the pictures anyway. :)

I haven't had much of a chance to try it out, but I also haven't worn down the batteries yet, which is a good first sign. I can fit six images on the 32MB CF card at the highest detail setting. That's just insane.

Mercutio

04-20-2002, 11:10 PM

And of course I misremember which Camera SD actually recommended. Oh well. It's still really nice.

... and off I go to use up a lot of color ink. Weeeeee!

James

04-21-2002, 02:14 AM

Well, since the digital camera afficienados seem to be circling in this thread... could I ask for some advice?

I'd like to spend the least possible money to get an acceptable quality digital camera. Ideally it should have USB connectivity but I won't take enough photos for it to be a really big deal.

The pictures it will take will always be inside and are destined for a web page. I'll be taking photos of CD-R/ROM and DVD-R/ROM drives - that's all. I don't think I need zoom and probably 1-1.3MP is all I need. I have a 64MB CompactFLASH card kicking around somewhere I could use if needed.

I'm not particularly interested in cameras as such - I have a little Olympus mju-II camera which is terrific for what I use it for (holiday snaps, basically) and now I need a digital one to replace my Kodak DC-20 which I won many years ago - the 640x480 quality isn't quite good enough for my purposes.

I was looking at the Kodak DC3200 since it's cheap (A$295, about USD150), but if anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear 'em. Bear in mind we tend to get things late and expensive compared to elsewhere in the world - the G2 mentioned above has just arrived on our shores and costs A$1800 (USD950 or so) discounted. So if you pitch me things that were a good deal about 12 months ago in the US, that'd be about right.

Pradeep

04-21-2002, 03:40 AM

I guess you will want something with decent macro capability to take detail shots (of the back of the drive?). And perhaps some decent flash capabilities so they aren't dim and dark like most of the pics on the web :) I would recommend a 995, but it would be complete overkill for just screen rez pics. It goes for about US$520 now, still over $1600 in Aus tho :(

James

04-21-2002, 05:31 AM

I think I'd want to pay less than a third of that amount. :)

Mercutio

04-21-2002, 08:34 AM

Kodak's consumer cameras are really nice., actually. The best part about them is the little $50 add-on USB cradle, since it also recharges your batteries and makes a decent place to keep the camera when you aren't using it, which is much better than the "where did I use it last" nonsense I'm constantly dealing with myself.

Pradeep

04-21-2002, 04:59 PM

Merc: There's a firmware update for the G2 available now.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0204/02041901canonpowershotfirmware.asp

Mercutio

04-21-2002, 07:31 PM

Didn't need it. My camera was just made two weeks ago.

Thanks though. I wouldn't have known.

Tea

04-22-2002, 10:02 AM

James, a little bit of my experience with the Sony, for what it's worth - which isn't much, as it's not something I'd particularly recommend unless you have special reason to want floppy disc storage.

For me, it was Hobson's choice, as my main priority was being able to use the camera with absolutely any PC. I don't need to take lots of shots but I do need to be able to take them anywhere there is a computer, and for this a floppy disc is the only answer.

(Sure, USB might be universal in another few years, and there might even be universal USB camera interface drivers by then, though I doubt it, but this ain't a few years time, it's now and much as some of you guys hate floppy drives they are the only universal medium. (Unless you count those iMac things as PCs, which I don't - they are designer furniture with a keyboard.) In two years time I won't have this camera anyway.)

Mercutio thinks I'm bananas to have bought one of these, he says I paid A$1000 for a $400 camera, and he's right. But there was no way I was going to buggerise about plugging in USB cables all the time. In, out, in, out, in, out till I break the socket or the cable. No thankyou.

Anyway, that meant I had three choices: Sony, Sony, or Sony. I got the MVC-FD100. Max res is 1280 but I nearly always use it at 1024 x 768, which is plenty fine enough for web work. But, unlike a real camera, you have to take it right the first time. With a real 35mm film camera, or even with the $2000 Nikon my dad just bought, you have resolution to burn. You can zoom and crop to your heart's content and still get an acceptable image quality. With only a modest number of megapixels to play with though, you pretty much have to have the final format of your picture in mind before you shoot.

Now you are going to be doing CD-ROM drives and their various optical relatives. That should be fairly easy, even though you are going to be working with a camera that is no better than mine. (Mine because it's a stupid Sony and a bit challenged, yours because it's going to be a cheap one - the $400 camera that Mercutio says I should have bought.

Tea

04-22-2002, 10:59 AM

I'm doing hard drives, CPUs, and motherboards. Each one is quite different.

The hard drives are middling-difficult. The first thing I discovered was that you can't just point and click. To start with, you need to decide if you are going to go for a formal view or an informal view. If you want a formal view - i.e., the drive centered in the frame like in a parts catelogue, then it has to be pretty close to exactly right. You only need to be ~5 to 10 degrees off dead centre to make the drive look very misshapen.

(Hmmm... I was going to put an example here, but I seem to have purged my site of every last example of this particular infelicity. Lots of others to go though yet though. Better drag one out and FTP it up.

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/nec-5146.jpg

That's a particularly bad example, and I've cropped it very close to make it look worse yet (with the dark coloured drive against the light Storage Forum background), but no one could miss those errors.

In a long shot, with plenty of background to surround the drive, you can get away with this sort of thing, at least a little of it, especially if you make sure that there are no semi-parallel lines close to it. The trick here is to shoot the drive against a background that is roughly the same color as the background of the web page where it will eventually appear.

More important though, you have to be exactly over the top of the drive. Even a tiny bit to one side or the other will cause distortion.

So: for formal shots of hard drives, and I'm sure that opticals will be the same, the rules are (1) shoot against a web-page coloured background, (2) shoot from exactly overtop.

But there is more. You have to shoot from a reasonable distance too, or else you get fish-eye distortion. Look at this example:

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/d-nec-dse1700.jpg

It probably looks OK at first, especially if you're not familiar with the particular drive, but the real drive does not bulge like that one. I've almost got away with it in this shot (a) because the drive will be unfamiliar to most people and unlike, say, a WD400BB, it doesn't have straight edges anyway, and (b) because it's not a formal straight up and down shot. By having the drive on that 30-odd degree angle, and by also by having it set against a dark background (to suit my page - it doesn't suit Storage Forum), the effect is hidden.

One last thing: you have to shoot by daylight. Direct sunlight is OK if you think about where the shadows are (and you can have a lot of fun with shadows if you go all informal and creative), cloudy days are OK too, until about the last half hour or so before dusk when it gets too dark for good results. With a cheap camera, probably anything under $3000 or so, you can't take formal shots by artificial light. Here is what happens if you try:

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/samsung-dud.jpg

Notice two things about it: first, the obvious - the artificial lighting makes it look terrible. This one was taken without flash. With flash it is much worse if you are anywhere near directly over the drive. Second, that not-quite-over-the-centre effect I mentioned above. Again it is masked, to some extent, by the black background I shot against.

The only way to shoot formal shots by artificial light (and you get lots of time off during the day, right?) is to invest in some really serious lighting gear. I don't know how much you'd have to spend, but probably $500 or so. We just don't realise how much brighter the sun is, even on a dull day, than our puny 150 Watt globes. I tried 7 100 Watt incandesent globes in my small front room and it wasn't even close. Not to mention the nightmare of trying to position things so that they didn't reflect off any of them.

You could use a seperate flash gun, one that you hold off to one side and is triggered by the camera but without triggering the camera's own built-in flash. Any camera over $3000 should let you do that. :(

Mind you, the effects of artifical light can be rather beautiful. Look at the colours thrown off by this angle:

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/samsung-dud2.jpg

That would be worth going back to and re-shooting next time I am stuck for a way to make yet another look-alike Samsung drive appear fresh and attractive.

Tea

04-22-2002, 11:40 AM

Oh: formal shots can look OK, but you have to get them just so. This one here -

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/d-fireball-cr.jpg

- a Quantum Fireball CR, doesn't look anything special but it does the job. It's still not quite right but that is about as good as I can get without either more practice or else a good quality tripod - I bought a cheap one to try out - $50 - but I can do just as well as that thing does hand-held. Notice that the background (black picture and white SF) and the tight cropping show up ever tiny variation. Just the same it took a great deal more work to shoot that than it did to take many of the much more impressive-looking informal shots.

(Quantums, by the way, are difficut. They all look exactly the bloody same! In fact, that's a CX which is illustrating my entry on the CR. I zoomed it down just enough to make the model number illegible.)

A couple more things you will need to learn: If you are shooting straight on, you must line the drive up exactly. Sure, you have image editing software that can rotate things for you, but no matter how good your software is, you can't rotate images in less than 45 degree increments unless you have pixels to burn. With a $400 camera, forget it. Either you line it up straight the first time, or you go back and re-shoot the bloody thing. For hand-held work, I find it best to shoot a whole floppy disc's worth (10 shots at 1024 resolution) all the same, then pick the best one. For motherboards (more on these later if I don't fall asleep first), you might need 20 or 30 till you get practiced at it. Motherboards are by far the hardest things to photograph though.

Now for the informal shots. These are a lot more fun. Look at what it's quite easy to do with even the ugliest of drives. Here's a Conner 420:

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/d-conner-cfs420.jpg

The closer you get, the easier it is to make it look nice. This next one, another unlovely Conner, I am particularly pleased with - though Conners were such ugly things in every way that making one look attractive is probably bad form.

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/d-conner-cfs1081a.jpg

OK, that's not an attractive photo in absolute terms, but given the drive I had to work with it's damn near a masterpiece. You should see how un-photogenic it looks in the 20 or 30 other shots I took. Notice how, in this informal shot, the reflection of the flash is on my side - indeed, it's the only thing that saves it from being utterly boring - instead of working to defeat me, as it is with straight-on formal shots.

But some drives are just impossible. I spent hours and hours trying to get a decent looking shot of my beloved old Mark 1 Cheetah. I shot it indoors, outdoors, close-up, long shot, straight-on, angled, with motherboards and SCSI cards and shrubbery and different drives and even tried my cats. I shot the damn thing against cork and carpet and concrete and brick paving and no matter what I did, it looked like a really, really boring hard drive.

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/d-st34501w.jpg

Bloody thing.

On the other hand, some drives just have natural charm. I must have a half-dozen decent shots of this 34GXP. This one is my favourite:

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/d-ibm-dpta-372050.jpg

Buck

04-22-2002, 11:53 AM

Boring indeed. Perhaps a shot of the disk drive's label alone would work for certain models. The Deskstar 34GXP, as you've pointed out, does look beautiful.

Tea

04-22-2002, 12:14 PM

It would be fun to pass on now to the things that can be done with the inside of hard drives. They are amazing things, and the games that you can play with reflecting things into them are limitless. Here, for example, is the result of no more than five minutes tinkering with a Medalist 10240 late one night. Excuse blurriness, it's zoomed down from 1024, and zooming does horrible things to pictures unless you have huge numbers of pixels to play with.

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/640-st310240.jpg

The thing I love about the hard drives is that it's just so easy to geat those wonderful surrealistic images without the slightest retouching. None of these three images have been anywhere near Photoshop, they are just raw pictures. The next two are still at 1024 by 768, so I'll just link to them.

First, a Quantum Bigfoot: http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/1024-bigfoot.jpg

Second, the Medalist 10240 again: http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/1024-st310240.jpg

I love this stuff!

(Err ... Tea, didn't you say you were not going to talk about taking pictures of hard drives with their lids off? Isn't this rather pointless, seeing as James wants to take pictures of optical drives?)

(Sorry Tannin. Quite right. I'll go right on to motherboard and CPU pictures. They are relevant to James. Same sort of issues crop up, and there is quite a lot I haven't covered yet.)

(Not tonight you won't. We are going to bed.)

(You might be going to bed. I'm staying up late.)

(I've got the body. You ain't getting the choice.)

(I thought it was my turn to be in charge of the body!)

(Tannin!)

(Awww, not fair!)

Cliptin

04-22-2002, 07:26 PM

More important though, you have to be exactly over the top of the drive. Even a tiny bit to one side or the other will cause distortion.

Sounds like you need a tripod and plumb line.

The only way to shoot formal shots by artificial light (and you get lots of time off during the day, right?) is to invest in some really serious lighting gear. I don't know how much you'd have to spend, but probably $500 or so. We just don't realise how much brighter the sun is, even on a dull day, than our puny 150 Watt globes. I tried 7 100 Watt incandesent globes in my small front room and it wasn't even close. Not to mention the nightmare of trying to position things so that they didn't reflect off any of them.

It sounds like you are trying to shoot with too much ambiant light. Professional portrait studios decrease the room lighting even when using big bucks lighting. Some of it is for light control but still.

Or you are talking about color temperature. They may make camera filters to help with this. I'm beginning to see florecent lights that produce an incandecent color temp. Maybe they were there before and I never noticed.

As far as reducing reflections you might try lighting the subject through a white sheet. You could also try using a reflective car sun-shade. Those things you put in the front window of the car to keep the dash from warping. The ones in my car appear to have an aluminum oxide coating for reflection.

Just random physics thoughts off the top of my head. I am not a professional. YMMV. Void where prohibited. Cash payment in advance.

Cliptin

04-22-2002, 07:31 PM

Perhaps you should shoot the seagate under a car tire or brick or something to express the durability. If you think your camera is good enough, you could try and capture a shot of someone chucking it into the air. "This drive once flew."

James

04-22-2002, 10:03 PM

Thanks for all that info Tony, and I look forward to the continuation.

I'm thinking I'll do my optical drive piccies outside on the weekend, since realistically with it taking 8-10 hours to test a drive, I'll be doing most of my reviewing on Saturdays and Sundays anyway. Thanks for the inside vs. outside information, as I said I don't do much photography except holiday snaps so even quite basic information is extremely helpful.

The centering effect does make me wonder if I had better invest in a tripod.

Funny seeing the picture of the CX - I have one of those sitting next to my keyboard at home. It's the original drive for my TiVo, which I have since replaced with the much quieter and much larger 40GB U6. The CX isn't particularly loud, but you could hear it outside the sealed case of the TiVo (which is pretty substantial - thick metal and foam too). The U6 is so quiet I have a hard time even telling it is on.

Tea

04-22-2002, 10:21 PM

Yup, more info on the way, James. It will indeed be basic level stuff, for despite my family influence, that's the level I am at.

I'm taking the day off today but it's too nice outside to spend long on the computer. (I'm sorting through my MFM controllers and taking pictures of the Miniscribe 8425/8438 twins. Also, carefully not bothering to mow the lawn.)

For CD drives, fish-eye distortion will be the major problem you face. They are easier than motherboards but not much. Some tips on this after dark. (Or if the sun goes out.)

God, Ballarat is beautiful in autumn.

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/victoria-st.jpg

Buck

04-23-2002, 02:12 PM

Nice picture. Why is everyone parked on the wrong side of the street, is it one-way? :lol:

Pradeep

04-23-2002, 03:11 PM

For CD drives, fish-eye distortion will be the major problem you face. They are easier than motherboards but not much. Some tips on this after dark. (Or if the sun goes out.)

Tony, the distortion is due to the lens. Some are better in this regard than others. Generally distortion is at it's worst at either end of the zoom range. If you set the zoom to the medium setting this effect should be reduced if not eliminated altogether. Switching to macro mode should also help.

Tea

04-23-2002, 07:37 PM

Isn't it funny that you can get quite a bit done when you only have a little while, but when you take a whole day off to do things, you achieve almost nothing. Didn't manage my promised other half last night. In fact I'm not sure that I achieved anything yesterday, except having a relaxing day in the soft autumn sunshine. Which is its own excuse, of course.

You're looking at the service lane, Buck. That's Victoria Street, which used to be the main entrance to Ballarat before the freeway bypassed the town. It's two lanes each way in the middle, plus a service lane on either side. My shop is not quite visible about 50 or 100 yards down past the green roof, just this side of the silver roof. In fact, parked outside the green roof place, once a milk bar or a tailor or some such, now just a house, is Kristi's white Valiant. My little toy blue car is in front of it. We always park a distance from the shop so that customers can park right out front.

Fish-eye distortion, Pradeep, may be contributed to by a lens, but it is essentially a matter of perspective. From that close up, things really are that shape. You can try closing one eye to see it for yourself, though it's difficult. You know how the Parthenon in Athens was built a funny shape so that it would look straight? This is why.

It also has to do with the focal length of the lens. There is a formula. I'll ask my dad what it is - he knows all that stuff.

Buck

04-24-2002, 11:32 AM

Beautiful looking street Tea, much less manicured then my own. I doubt I'll ever visit Ballarat, but Australia as a whole beckons my visit.

Tea

04-25-2002, 10:15 AM

CPUs. Not relevant to your task, James, but CPUs are really, really easy. Or at least they are with the Mavica, which has excellent macro abilities.

In fact, there is something of a mystery there. The Mavica has several pre-set focus buttons (well, one button, but you know what I mean) - 0.5m, 1m, 3m, 7m, infinity and auto.

For some reason that is utterly beyond my understanding, you can set these any way you like and it just cheerfuly ignores you and auto focuses anyway. Even more beyond my ken is that, for the sort of stuff I am interested in doing, it seems to produce the best results on the macro (0.5m) setting no matter how far away you are from the subject.

It makes no sense at all, but the best way to get pictures of medium-sized objects like motherboards is to ...

(Tea!)

(Sorry Tannin. I said CPUs first, and CPUs first it is. I'll talk about boards later.)

For CPUs and similar small objects, I still use 1024 resolution, get as close as I like, point and click. That's about it. And the results are often very pleasing:

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/c-386sx33.jpg

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/c-xp1700.jpg

Those two are by daylight, the next two are indoors with flash. Surprisingly enough, flash works just fine with this small stuff, so long as you are careful with camera angles.

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/c-v20.jpg

And, of course, if you use a hard drive too, it can be lots of fun.

http://www.redhill.net.au/jpg/c-p166mmx.jpg

You can take things square-on too, of course, but it starts to look very, very boring rather quickly, and you have to line things up exactly straight, otherwise it looks poor.

Mercutio

04-25-2002, 12:31 PM

Ignoring the native beauty of Tannin's hometown (that garden is spectacular), that last batch of images - the P5 reflected in the platter and the AMD 386, are both really outstanding photographs.

time

04-25-2002, 09:40 PM

Yes, he's disturbingly good, isn't he? A good eye for composition and steady hands. :)

In another thread, Buck made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the 75GXP autopsy pictures should have been taken with Tannin's Mavica, rather than the Nikon Coolpix 995. Not only does the Nikon have four times the resolution, it has a solid reputation for macro shooting.

Yet Tannin's pictures are vastly superior. In fact, they're as good as any I've seen in brochures etc, shot by pros. I can only hope that Tea manages to stop him getting a swelled head. :wink:

Handruin

04-25-2002, 10:07 PM

Now you got me interested in a camera. I looked up the FD 1000 and wow is it expensive. (and discontinued)

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp?cameras=sony_cd1000&method=sidebyside I see it's the CD version, is the FD just as expensive?

Pradeep

04-25-2002, 10:44 PM

I think Tony has the FD-100, the FD1000 was a typo he corrected later. I couldn't find a review of it at dpreview.com.

Here it is:

FD100 (http://eshop.msn.com/eshopframe.aspx?merchId=2589&catId=2&u=http%3A%2F%2Fclick%2Eavenuea%2Ecom%2Fgo%2Fmsn%5F eshop%5Fbestbuy%5Fba992%5F062300kvr%5F01%2Fdirect% 2F01%3FHREF%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebestbuy%2Ecom%2Fd etail%2Easp%3Fe%3D11101240%26m%3D83%26cat%3D83%26s cat%3D84)

James

04-26-2002, 01:35 AM

Blah blah blah, lovely photos, how to take pictures, blah blah blah - but what I still want to know is what digital camera I should get. :)

Pradeep

04-26-2002, 02:29 AM

Is Merc's G2 on crack?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0204/02042203g2crackcomment.asp

time

04-26-2002, 09:01 AM

James is chafing, so here is my amateur attempt at selecting a camera for him. All you photo-phreaks can correct me later.

Firstly, the brands you can actually get in Oz: Canon, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus, Sony. You can also get Fuji and Minolta, but I've no idea where. I've seen Panasonic and Samsung too, but I'm not sure they should be mentioned in the same breath as proper brands.

Your target price appears to be AU$500 including tax, or about US$200. That excludes Nikon and Sony outright, and probably Canon as well.

You mentioned the Kodak DC3200, which is something you'd buy your nieces and nephews for Christmas. The showstopper feature here is its minimum focussing distance of 60cm. Combined with the weeny f4.7 lens, it's probably best for pictures of the sunlit side of a barn.

Next step up is the Kodak DX3215, which actually has a "macro" function that gets you up to 25cm away. Wow. Under AU$450 and it adds 2x optical zoom with a maximum aperture of f3.8. Sound better? But what's this, there's no automatic focussing, the bloody thing is infinite focus!

You can also set fire to your money with the Kodak DX3500, which at AU$500 gives you more pixels, takes away the zoom, and still offers only infinite focus.

You might still be able to pick up an obsolete Olympus C100 for as little as AU$450. No zoom, a weedy f4 lens, and minimum distance of 25cm. Batteries and charger are AU$85 extra (like Canon A series, they pretend you can get by with alkaline batteries).

Olympus C1 raises the quality bar, with an f2.8 maximum aperture, 2x optical zoom and 10cm minimum distance. But it's nearly AU$650. The battery comments still apply.

Now that we've blown your budget, let's consider the Canon A30 at about AU$600. f2.8, 3x optical zoom and 16cm minimum distance. Good allrounder, but don't forget it eats standard alkalines for breakfast. Budget for a rechargeable setup.

The best on paper for what you want would be the Nikon 2500, because of its swivelling lens and decent macro facility down to 4cm. It's also a 2 megapixel camera and tiny, but I'd guess it's nearly double what you'd want to pay.

Now for those of us that thought Tannin and Tea were mad, I checked the specs on the Sony FD100. The damn thing has a huge f1.8 maximum aperture, and a minimum autofocus distance of 3cm :excl: Plus 3x optical zoom and it comes bundled with a rechargeable lithium battery and charger.

Maybe Red Hill's finest do know what they are doing?

Mercutio

04-26-2002, 10:32 AM

Is Merc's G2 on crack?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0204/02042203g2crackcomment.asp

Not yet. Believe me, I'm taking good care of it, although I haven't shot many images with it yet. The interface is a little clunky compared to my Kodak, too.

For what it's worth, I'd rather have a manual focus than automatic. I've had entirely too many pictures ruined after composition by a camera deciding to focus on infinity rather than the object I'm trying to photograph.

Iomega.com is selling 340MB microdrives for $70. Anyone interested in a link?

Tea

04-26-2002, 11:00 AM

That idiot Tannin had gone and deleted every single damn file off his server, just because he was three and a half GB over his 20GB limit and he was too damn lazy to try to work out which files were the useless ones that should have been deleted years ago. Oh no. That would be too bloody easy for our Mr Swelled Bloody Head Tannin. Much more practical to nuke the whole damn lot - .jpg, .zip, .html, right down to the .htaccess file - and just put back the ones he wants to keep.

Ha!

Now I get to sort his mess out.

Still, at least I can impose a little bit or order while I'm at it: changing his impractical file name system to something that makes sense, for a start. What a mess he made of it!

Anyway, when I've finished, so long as no one objects, I'm going to make him go through his Storage Forum posts and amend his URLs to fit the new filenames.

Bloody men. It's probably going to take me all night.

Oh, and, er , guys? Do you really think Tannin is a photographer? Mr nose-in-a-book-all-day Tannin? Let's just say that he has better pictures and worse ones, and he had someone help with most of the better ones. She's a little shy, so I won't mention her name.

Buck

04-26-2002, 11:08 AM

Tea,

Tell Tannin to use software to recover his files, unless of course he's already gone and over-written them.

As for his photography - help or not, his pictures have turned out better then those of "professional" review sites.

In regards to this thread in general, the information has been quite educational, although I am surprised that the likes of Tea and Mercutio visit this thread with their dial-up connections. More pictures of Ballarat would be nice, maybe the odd picture of Red Hill on Tannin's website would be nice touch too.

Mercutio

04-26-2002, 11:55 AM

Mozilla blithely ignores off-server images, so unless I'm someplace where there's a faster internet connection and no Mozilla (ie working), I don't see them.

Tannin

04-26-2002, 01:01 PM

Ahh, Tea is just a panic merchant. Nothing in the slightest unplanned or dangerous going on. I just downloaded the entire site to my local drive, backed it up to CD, and then deleted the remote copy. If Tea would stop running round in circles waving her hands in the air for an hour or so, I'd have the new, no-server-space-wasted site already FTPed back up. We have almost finished the motherboards section already.

But I have to admit, Tea helped with most of the pictures.

Seriously guys, those comments of yours above made my day. Thankyou!

Now, back to work before Tea starts frothing at the mouth again ...

Pradeep

04-26-2002, 04:56 PM

20 GB of remote storage Tony? Or is that 20 MB?

Merc, make sure those 340MB Microdrives are Mk II models that spin at 3600rpm, and not the first gen models that spin at 4400rpm. The Mk I models did have reports of failures in some cameras (perhaps a heat related problem?)

From what I can work out here are the two different versions of the 340MB drives:

Product: UPC Code: SCM P/N IBM P/N
340 MB IBM Microdrive 087944-502500 MD340 07N4096
340 MB IBM Microdrive 087944-561699 MD340 07N5600

I'm guessing the second drive is the latest model.

Did you know there is a $50 dollar rebate on them?

http://www.microtechint.com/specialoffers/50off-mdrebate/index.html

Tea

04-27-2002, 05:56 AM

Thanks for editing my posts, Tannin.

Tannin

04-27-2002, 06:00 AM

No problem, little sister. All the URLs are different now that we have more-or-less reloaded the site, so I just adjusted the links.

Pradeep: yes, an FD-100. The 1000 was a mistake. And 20MB too. 20GB of server space would be nice, but it's actually 20MB.

Pradeep

04-27-2002, 06:24 AM

I was just thinking how long 20GB would take to dl on a dial up modem and realised it must be MB.

Tony, did you see the post a few days ago with bizzarro english in it?

Lo = Hello?
Go = Gigabyte?
Mo = Megabyte?

Needless to say I didn't reply lol.

Tannin

04-27-2002, 06:27 AM

20MB takes long enough!

Post? What post?

Pradeep

04-27-2002, 06:36 AM

Sorry should have said thread. I believe it was in the "other place". No matter.

James

04-27-2002, 08:05 AM

David,

I think that ranks as about the most useful response to a post of mine I've ever had. Thank you immensely.

You're very good at spending other people's money, aren't you? ;) But seriously, I think what you're saying in a very nice way is that if I want to get a camera worthy of the name, I'm going to have to spend a bit more money.

Cameras are hard for me, because I don't know enough about them to make judgements on them from the specs. Televisions, computers, DVD players and so on I know inside out and I can ask questions manufacturers apparently can't answer (eg. "does it accept progressive scan? Okay, how about PAL progressive? Does the PAL progressive bypass the internal line doubler?" etc.) but with cameras I'm reduced to the "what's that circular glass thing at the front?" level, I'm afraid. I don't even know the right questions to ask.

Thanks again. Anyone have anything to add before I set off to the local camera shop, cash in my hand?

Pradeep

04-27-2002, 04:33 PM

Buy from the USA?

James

05-01-2002, 08:42 AM

Excellent timing : I've got to go to HK on business for the week of the 13th. So I can probably get more camera for my money - I'm going to sell my Sun box to cover it (the things I do!).

So what's a good, midpriced digital camera? I'll probably spend about A$800 or so (about HK$4K I guess). Maybe the A40?

Tannin

05-01-2002, 09:38 AM

I'm afraid I can't offer any useful advice on that James. I just don't know anything much about them, other than my own Sony, which is almost certainly not the right thing for you.

Tea will no doubt finish off her mini-how-to sometime over the next few days with some tips on distance and scaling, and complaints about how hard it is to photograph motherboards.

Buck

05-02-2002, 07:21 PM

Tannin,

Do you use the memory stick much with your camera, or do you primarily work with the floppy diskette? Additionally, how well has the battery performed for you?

BR

Tea

05-02-2002, 07:40 PM

Buck

05-02-2002, 07:50 PM

I've been meaning to buy a memory stick for some time, Buck. Not got around to it yet. Well, I did buy a 512k one, but discovered it was the wrong sort. (Bloody Sony.) But I gave it to my dad for his new Nikon, so it wasn't wasted. So 100% floppy at present. I should imagine that the only thing I'll use the stick for is non-computer stuff, such as if I take the camera to a family event or some such.

What file types have you picked for your pictures (JPEG Standard, TIFF)?

Battery life is OK. Just OK, not fantastic. It's lithium and lasts for maybe an hour or so if I'm shooting quite a lot, half that if I'm using flash, and I'd like it to be longer but it's not much trouble to plug it back into the juice most of the time. I imagine that a 4 times normal speed floppy (which the Mavica uses) must chew through quite a lot of juice.

Hmmm. I wonder how well that camera would perfom at a family event. Turn on the flash, take a few pictures, and the battery is dead. That would be annoying. However, I do like the quality of the pictures you've taken so far. I doubt it is all because of you, the camera must have some good qualities to it.

Is it my imagination, or is the life shorter now than it used to be already? I have given it quite a hammering, after all. Ten images to the floppy, on average, and I can't quite fit the backups onto one blank CD. That's quite a lot of snaps.

Ten images to the floppy? What file type and size are you shooting at again? :D

Thanks for you help.

BR

Tea

05-02-2002, 08:03 PM

Those are rough estimates only, Buck. And assuming that I'm not really doing anything else much bar take pictures: i.e., getting on for constant use. At a family event, unless it was a wedding or something like that, you'd not take snaps at anything like that rate. This is when I've got a half-dozen items to potograph all lined up and take somewhere between ten and fifty shots of each, stopping every twenty or forty shots to look at them on-screen and see how I'm going.

The Sony has just two image formats: JPG and GIF. The gif is useless for anything except documents, it's grey-scale only. I usually shoot at 1024 x 768. The Sony has two different 1280 modes, plus 640 x 480, but 1024 works best for me. Sometimes I'll shoot at 1280 but the images get too cumbersome to work with easily, and the extra resolution doesn't achieve all that much. I think that a TIFF option would be ideal for motherboards. The file size would be enormous but I could crop and resize before converting to JPG or PNG. (Motherboards are very difficult, because you need masses of detail and they have lots of square edges. Not really good JPG material. Indeed, a proper GIF would be better for them - no need for more than 256 colours, sharp edged are a must.

I think the real answer for motherboards is my dad's Nikon. Another $2000. Sigh.

Pradeep

05-02-2002, 08:16 PM

Tea, what camera did your Dad get? A film based or digital? I'm guessing the Coolpix 5000?

Pradeep

05-02-2002, 08:19 PM

What kind of rechargeable battery is in your camera? A Lithium Ion batt should be good for 300-500 "full" recharges, or the equivalent of part charges, before it's charge capacity drops down too much.

Tea

05-02-2002, 08:22 PM

Digital, Pradeep. He has an assortment of Canons for film, plus the usual miscelleny of dark room gear and lenses and stuff that keen photographers collect over the years.

Not sure the model, but you can probably work it out from the price. It was $2600 until the day before he bought it (maybe two months ago), when it dropped to $2000 - sometimes you just get lucky!

Cliptin

09-30-2002, 09:53 PM

The JoJo

10-01-2002, 01:39 AM

Onomatopoeic

10-01-2002, 02:41 AM

I still use my "old" Olympus C-2500, which is still one of the best "affordable" (< US$1200) low-light digital still cameras to date -- except that it isn't manufactured and sold any longer. It has a large aspherical low-dispersion glass lens, uses both SmartMedia and CompactFlash, full-manual control capability.

http://a384.g.akamai.net/7/384/1468/20011108234246/www.olympusamerica.com/img/cpg_images/support/support_380.jpghttp://a384.g.akamai.net/7/384/1468/20011108234159/www.olympusamerica.com/img/cpg_images/product/huge380.jpg

Now, what I *really* need is a half-way affordable Nikon digital still camera that can accept the dozen or more expensive fast Nikkor conventional camera lenses (Nikon bayonet mount) that I have for use with my 35-year-old Nikon F and 20-year-old F3.

http://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/1691NAS_180.jpg

http://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/1429NAS_180.jpghttp://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/1910NAS_180.jpghttp://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/1457NAS_180.jpg

Unfortunately, the "cheapest" such a dream camera comes is still too much at about US$3600 for a Nikon D1H. And, using my "old" conventional Nikkor lenses on one of these "new" digital Nikons throws the camera into full manual mode without the use of the internal light meter. <argh>

Fushigi

10-01-2002, 08:25 AM

I just bought my father a Canon Powershot G2 + 256MB kingston CF. The camera feels quite good, a bit heavy though. The zoom is easy to use. The only complain I might have is that the LCD is a bit small, and the font size perhaps a bit too small for elderly people. Other than that the camera felt quite good.Nice. I've got the G1 and have been quite happy with it. Coupled with a 1GB MicroDrive it stored over 650 pics from our wedding through our honeymoon. All shots @ 2Kx1.5K max quality. Still had room for another 400+ shots.

Battery life is another strong suit.

When downloading hundreds of pics at a time, I did get some transmit probs over the USB line. This messed up some of the photos & I re-downloaded them individually. Doing 50+ shots at a time is fine, but doing hundreds may be a little troublesome. Doesn't the USB spec include error correction?

- Fushigi

Pradeep

10-03-2002, 03:42 PM

I find the biggest problem with transferring hundreds of pics from Microdrive via USB is that it sucks the batteries dry pretty quick. For large transfers I use a PC Card adaptor, it's a little quicker as well.

Fushigi

10-03-2002, 03:51 PM

We keep the camera charger by the PC so we just plug it in while downloading.

Oh, if you've got hundreds of photos on the drive, try to download them all and then delete them all instead of download - delete - download - delete - etc. Every time you delete the pics at the beginning of the drive, it apparently defrags & moves everything that remains to the beginning of the drive. Dunno if this is a CF trait or a microdrive trait, but shuffling 500+ images to the beginning of the drive takes a minute or two. Placing my head by the camera, I heard the drive heads going like mad...

- Fushigi

Pradeep

10-03-2002, 04:43 PM

Once I've downloaded, I just format the Microdrive in the camera. I find this is far faster than deleting all images. Actually I had 32KB of bad clusters the other day, a chkdsk and scandisk marked them as bad and now it seems to be working OK, only lost one picture.

Cliptin

10-03-2002, 05:45 PM

Scandisk on a camera? I thought I had heard it all. Have you tried to resize the clusters with Partition Magic?

Pradeep

10-03-2002, 09:00 PM

Sadly my Nikon 995 only recognises FAT16. But apparently the newest breed of D-SLR have FAT32 support for >2GB Microdrives :)

SteveC

10-03-2002, 09:18 PM

Has anyone used the Nikon Coolpix 5700? My parents are in the market for a new camera, and that's the one they're looking at.

Steve

Dozer

10-03-2002, 09:24 PM

Have you tried to resize the clusters with Partition Magic?

Hehe...maybe you could partition and run Linux on it :D (Hey, it works on the Xbox)

Cliptin

10-03-2002, 10:28 PM

I just bought a Canon A20. Not that it helps you any.

James

10-03-2002, 11:02 PM

Mercutio

10-04-2002, 12:50 AM

Hehe...maybe you could partition and run Linux on it :D (Hey, it works on the Xbox)

Don't laugh too loud. I can play Doom on my old Kodak DC290.

time

10-04-2002, 07:19 AM

I just bought a Canon A20.
Where did you find it? I thought it had been long superseded by the A40.

It's a while since James was looking. Since then Nikon released the 2500 and 2000 two megapixel cameras. They would have been preferable for his original intention, considering their superior macro capability, and in Oz anyway, lower price.

But the A40/A20 is still a good camera. BTW, the A40 adds audio to the movie recording mode, which is quarter size and half frame rate. How useful is that additional feature to people here? I'm curious.

Cliptin

10-04-2002, 09:22 AM

I just bought a Canon A20.
Where did you find it? I thought it had been long superseded by the A40.

Ebay. $236 for camera, 2x 8MB CF chips, 4 NIMH batteries and charger shipped. I was looking for a starter camera that still took decent pictures and I did not want to spend very much.

James

10-05-2002, 02:10 AM

It's a while since James was looking. Since then Nikon released the 2500 and 2000 two megapixel cameras. They would have been preferable for his original intention, considering their superior macro capability, and in Oz anyway, lower price.
I only paid about AUD580 in the end, buying it new in Singapore. It's a very nice camera, far better than what I need indeed.

But the A40/A20 is still a good camera. BTW, the A40 adds audio to the movie recording mode, which is quarter size and half frame rate. How useful is that additional feature to people here? I'm curious.
Not much use at all, really. The movie mode is a bit of a novelty, and you can get a respectable amount of video into a 128MB memory card. But what practical use is it? Not much.

adriel

10-05-2002, 05:36 AM

Mercutio

10-05-2002, 08:54 AM

I've sat on CF modules - and I'm a substantial guy - and they've continued to work. Dropped them... ditto. The retention method for CF is fairly idiot proof. Like most computer stuff, you'd have to be very stupid and very strong to actually put on in the wrong way.

10-05-2002, 12:13 PM

Wait a minute. How rugged are consumer grade Compact Flash memory modules? Can they be dropped on cement without risk of data loss and/or corruption? How well do they handle environmental extremes of hot and cold? Humidity and altitude? Has anyone here ever had a CF stick loose its data retention?

Also, how sturdy are the CF memory module insertion mechanisms? Do they grasp CF modules tightly, and if so, is the grip mechanically and/or structurally weak?

From http://www.compactflash.org/:

Connector – The connector used with CompactFlash is similar to the PCMCIA Card connector, but with 50 pins. Years of field experience in portable devices have proven the reliability and durability of this connector in applications where frequent insertions and ejections of the card are required. Other small form factor flash cards use connector technology that is not reliable or durable in these applications .

Shock – CF cards have an operating shock rating of 2,000 Gs, which is equivalent to a 10-foot drop. With typical usage, a CF card can be used for more than 100 years with no loss or deterioration of data.

Pradeep

10-05-2002, 01:08 PM

Of course Microdrive is a fair bit more fragile, mine lives on a velvet cushion when not in the camera ;)

NickWild

10-07-2002, 11:51 PM

I think the canon A40 might be the best all around deal for a digital camera....$299 and it has interchangable lenses...shoots 30 sec movies with sound...very compact......Maximum aperture ranges from f/2.8 at full wide angle to f/4.8 at full telephoto, and can be manually adjusted or left under automatic control.

just my opinion because I bought one and love it....I got 256meg compact flash disc for it which will allow me to take 259 pictures at the highest resolution which is 1,600 x 1,200.....great for any vacation and not having to buy film

time

10-08-2002, 06:30 AM

Wow, you're right. I had no idea you could get interchangeable lenses for this level of camera. I don't think you can even get them for the S30/S40.

However, I'd like to pick a bone with Canon over their claims for movie recording (no offense to you). Whereas other manufacturers such as Olympus, Nikon and Sony quote the maximum movie length at QVGA resolution (320x240), Canon quotes it at 160x120!

So the A40 can actually manage only 10 seconds of Quarter VGA footage. At least that's what I've heard, and that's what the manual says.

NickWild

10-09-2002, 06:38 AM

However, I'd like to pick a bone with Canon over their claims for movie recording (no offense to you). Whereas other manufacturers such as Olympus, Nikon and Sony quote the maximum movie length at QVGA resolution (320x240), Canon quotes it at 160x120!

So the A40 can actually manage only 10 seconds of Quarter VGA footage. At least that's what I've heard, and that's what the manual says.

yes I agree that was a little lame on there part

NickWild

10-09-2002, 06:40 AM

time

10-09-2002, 08:01 AM

Check the manual. Page 65 says:

The maximum length of movie clips (approximately 20 frames/second) is about 10 seconds at the (320x240) setting and about 30 seconds at the (160x120) setting.

Have you found yours is different?

Tea

06-08-2003, 01:23 AM

Tannin and I have been on holiday, and now that Belinda has finally got herself a camera of her own, we got to play with our Sony again for a while. Of the various and many things we pointed it at, here is my favourite.

http://www.redhill.net.au/sf/Australian-Pelicans-s.jpg

That's the thumbnail. For the convenience of people with pixel-challenged screens, I've put the real thing in a seperate thread over here (http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=34780#34780).

Tea

06-08-2003, 02:20 AM

Having become a little bored with computers of late, my main interest in photography is wildlife, in particular, birds. There are no two ways about it: this means getting lots of magnification.

So, the other week, I almost bought a Leica digital camera and scope set, to give me 60X magnification and a camera that didn't inflict that dreadful damn wait after you push the button before the shutter triggers that nearly all digital cameras are afflicted with.

The Leica didn't seem perfect, but closer than anything else bar a Panasonic-badged version of the same thing. (The two camers have optics by Leica and electronics by Panasonic.)

As luck would have it, however, they had stopped making that particular model. So I saved quite a lot of money in the short term, and I still don't have a digiscoping set-up. But I aim to go that way just the same.

The only other alternative is to go back to a film-based SLR and a big telephoto lens, and that ain't a realistic option: the initial cost is astronomical - in the order of 15G - and then there is the running cost and processing delay involved with film rather than digital media.

Anyway, I'm keeping my eyes open for a good quality scope, and a camera to match it.